Heronry

Simon Barnes, in his fascinating book The Meaning of Birds, informs me that 'heron' is one of the words removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary to make space for terms such as 'voicemail' and 'database'. A pity. I think the heron has a particular appeal to children. They are easy to see – you couldn’t possibly miss a heron. They are also undeniably weird – and children love weirdness. 

My herons (they’re not mine of course, but because I can see them from my desk, I think of them as mine) are few in number this year. Before 'the beast from the east' there were as many as seventeen nests in the wood opposite but now there are only three, and they're smaller than usual. Perhaps the big old platforms blew down in this year's winter gales, and new ones have had to be built.

The very wet February we have just had, with its fierce winds and squalls of torrential rain, will not have helped, and the field at the back of my house, which provided the herons with a plentiful supply of frogs, has recently been partially built over and a dozen or so aviaries installed. 

There are plenty more frogs in the valley - up at Summit the ditches are oozing with spawn - and I often see solitary herons fishing in the Roch, so these great birds will not go short of food, but the field was a sort of corner shop, convenient for a quick gullet-full for a hungry youngster. The new aviaries house pheasants and peacocks and other exotic species, but I'd rather have the herons.